The visit to our shores this week of the Most Rev. and Rt. Hon. Dr. John Sentamu, Archbishop of York, Primate of England, is an important moment, not only for the Anglican Church here at whose invitation he has come to commemorate the bicentenary of the abolition of the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans, but for the wider society.

It is another moment of historic note, reminding us of the long journey to freedom which was travelled and is still being traversed by the ancestors of the great majority of the Jamaican people. In honouring their journey, the heritage of those from other lineage is not exempted, for in the process to free the enslaved, the history of other races was also put to the test.

Archbishop Sentamu is an example of the many strands which went into the weaving of that historical tapestry, involving Church and State, God and Mammon. His history is one of personal testing and triumph. A brilliant scholar, born in Uganda, he had reached th of judge of the High Court by the age of 24, but when he spoke out against the tyranny and injustice in his country, under the brutal leadership of dictator Idi Amin, he earned himself imprisonment.

From jail, he went on to seek refuge in England where he exchanged the Court for the Church, motivated by the Christian doctrine which sees justice in a wider, more encompassing way. Sentamu exchanged his legal career for ministry. His intellectual brilliance earned him degrees from the most respected theological institutions that his new homeland had to offer. With ordination began what is now celebrated as a remarkable career in the service of the God to whom he has dedicated his life.

Sentamu's appointment to the See of York, the second highest office in the Anglican communion, second only to the See of Canterbury, was not honour just for him but for his race.

He is the first man of colour to occupy one of the most prestigious and powerful offices in the Church's history. That has not diminished Sentamu's outspokenness, his critical appraisal not only of secular society but of his own church.

His call for action and his personal involvement to obtain justice and freedom for the oppressed, mostly people of colour, still kept to the margins of British society, is repeated in the hallowed halls of the Church also. There, he cries out for relevance, to move the Gospel from the marble halls to the noisy reality of the streets, to bring into being the new Jerusalem.

His jocund style, his cutting-edge humour, his passion for the arts (he played African drums at his own consecration in the stately Cathedral of York) have made him a favourite of the British media. His elevation to the house of Lords and the Privy Council, important though they be, he puts in perspective, as but temporal milestones along the way.

He would rather be recognised for the focus on bringing justice to the oppressed and freedom to those unjustly held in captivity. It is such a man as this who we welcome among us today. We celebrate, too, the courage of the Church which has moved from its early roots of ministry to the enslaver to witness to the descendants of the enslaved. In that spirit, the Anglican Church in Jamaica and the Cayman Islands must be commended for its own focus on the bicentenary under the theme 'Called to Freedom, Working for Justice, Embracing Responsibility'.